Psychodynamic art therapy

Domain VIII · Creative & expressive arts therapies · Margaret Naumburg · 1947

What it is

It is a psychoanalytically oriented individual psychotherapy. The patient makes spontaneous drawings, paintings or clay pieces, then free-associates to them, and the patient (not the therapist) works out what the images mean. Naumburg called the method "closely allied to psychoanalytic therapy" and…

Format

• Naumburg's published account, as reported in the sources, does not set out numbered phases, a fixed number of sessions or formal criteria for moving between phases. The 1966 book is not drawn on. Its catalogue and Bookshare records show that it is organised around three case studies of adult women.…
• Format. Individual sessions, usually alongside other treatment. In the 1947 work there were six inpatients at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, seen "for varying periods". Their art sessions ran in parallel with play therapy given by another worker and with occasional psychiatric…

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• Version followed: Margaret Naumburg's "dynamically oriented art therapy" as set out in her 1958 chapter and Dynamically Oriented Art Therapy: Its Principles and Practice, Illustrated with Three Case Studies (New York: Grune & Stratton, 1966; xxiv + 168 pp., illustrated partly in colour; reissued by Magnolia Street Publishers, ISBN 9780961330910), with her earlier 1947 inpatient monograph on children and adolescents.…
• Professional frame. In the UK, "art therapist" and "art psychotherapist" are titles protected by law under the Health Professions Order 2001. Only people on the HCPC register may use them, and misuse is a criminal offence. The route to registration is an HCPC-approved master's degree (2 years full-time or 3 years part-time). A psychotherapist who is not registered may use art inside their own psychotherapy but must…

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Does it use a device, heat, cold, water or a physical procedure? Has a medical professional checked that it is safe for you?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• colleagues reading pictures as diagnostic evidence (correct this, see section 5).
• self-practice uncovering your own material (take it to personal therapy or supervision); patients turning the journal into a performance for you.
• idealising or devaluing reactions to the therapist's response to the art; making work only to please; the patient feeling exposed when you look. Slow down and explore it.
• a patient anxious about where the work goes or who sees it, which may be transference material; work left behind after a drop-out (follow records policy and do not display it).
• compliance ("yes, that's right" without any new material), which suggests the interpretation was imposed; new associations or a shift in subsequent images, which suggest it landed.

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.